Database System

Concepts and Architecture

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 Outline
1. Data Models and Their Categories
2. Schemas, Instances, and States
3. Three-Schema Architecture
4. Data Independence
5. Classification of DBMSs

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Data Models
• Data Model:
• A Data Model is set of concepts that describe:

a. The structure of a database, the

b. The operations for manipulating these structures, and
c. Certain constraints that the database should comply
with.

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Data Models: Structure
Data Model Structure
• The following constructs (elements) are used to define the database
structure:
• Entities: the things that we store information about such as
PERSON, STUDENT, COURSE, VEHICLE, INSTRUCTOR, ext.
• Attributes: these are the characteristics that describe the
entities. For example, the EMPLOYEE entity might have
attributes such as: Name, Address, Job, Salary, ext.
• relationships that connects entities. Such as the advice/advised by
relationship between INSTRUCTOR and COURSE.

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Data Models: Operations
Data Model Operations:
• These operations are used for specifying database retrievals and
updates by referring to the constructs of the data model.
• Operations on the data model may include
 basic model operations (e.g. generic insert, delete, update) and
 user-defined operations (e.g. compute_student_gpa,
update_inventory)

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Data Models: Constraints
Constraints:

 Constraints specify some restrictions on valid data; these constraints

must be enforced at all times. For example, the value of salary
cannot be negative.

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Categories of Data Models
1. High-level Conceptual Data Models:
 A Conceptual Data Model is an organized view of database
elements and their relationships.
 The purpose of creating a conceptual data model is to
establish entities, their attributes, and relationships.
 The 3 basic elements of the Conceptual Data Model are:
 Entity: A real-world thing
 Attribute: Characteristics or properties of an entity
 Relationship:
Dependency or
association
between two
entities
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7
Categories of Data Models
2. Logical (implementation) Data Models:
• The logical data model defines the structure of the data elements
and establish the relationships between them.
• Three well-known data models of this type are relational data
model, network data model and hierarchical data model.

Relational Data Model

 The Relational Model uses a
collection of tables both for data
and the relationships among those
data.
 Each table have multiple
column and each column has a
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name
unique.
Categories of Data Models
Network Data Model
 The data in the network model are represented by collection of
records and relationships among data are represented by links, which
can be viewed as pointers.

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Categories of Data Models
Hierarchical Data Model
 A hierarchical data model is a data model where the data is
organized into a tree like structure.
 The structure allows
repeating information
using parent/child
relationships: each
parent can have many
children but each
child only has one
parent. All attributes
of a specific record
are listed under an
entity type.

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Categories of Data Models
3. Physical (low-level, internal) data models:
 Provide concepts that describe details of how data is stored
and searched:
 Data types of attributes
 Primary indexes
 Secondary indexes
 Partitioning strategy

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2. Schemas versus Instances
• Database Schema:
• The description of a database.
• Includes descriptions of the database structure, data types, and
the constraints on the database.
• Schema Diagram:
• An illustrative display of a database schema.
• Schema Construct:
• A component of the schema or an object within the schema, e.g.,
STUDENT, COURSE.

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Schemas versus Instances
• Database State:
• The actual data stored in a database at a particular moment in
time.
• This includes the collection of all the data in the database.
• Also called database instance (or occurrence or snapshot).
• The term instance is also applied to individual database
components, e.g. record instance, table instance, entity instance

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Database Schema vs. Database State
• Database State:
• Refers to the content of a database at a moment in time.
• Initial Database State:
• Refers to the database state when it is initially loaded into
the system.
• Valid State:
• A state that satisfies the structure and constraints of the
database.

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Database Schema vs. Database State (continued)
• Distinction
• The database schema changes very infrequently.
• The database state changes every time the database is updated.

• Schema is also called intension.

• State is also called extension.

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Example of a Database Schema
Database Schema

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 Example of a database state
Database State

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 3. Three-Schema Architecture and Data
Independence
The three schema architecture was proposed to support
DBMS characteristics of:
• Program-data independence.
• Support of multiple views of the data.

 There are three types of schema:

1. External Schemas
2. Conceptual Schema
3. Internal Schema

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 Three-Schema Architecture
• This architecture defines DBMS schemas at three levels:
1. External schemas at the external level to describe the
various user views.
• External schemas are usually represented by high level conceptual
data models or logical data models depending on database
complexity.
2. Conceptual schemas at the conceptual level to describe the
structure and constraints for the whole database for a group
of users.
• Conceptual schemas are represented by a high-level conceptual
or a logical (implementation) data model.
3. Internal schemas at the internal level to describe
physical storage structures and access paths (e.g search
indexes). uses a physical data model.
• Typically Slide 2- 19
The Three-schema
Architecture

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 Three-Schema Architecture
• Mappings among schema levels are needed to transform requests
and data.
• Programs refer to an external schema, and are mapped by the
DBMS
to the internal schema for execution.
• Data extracted from the internal DBMS level is reformatted to
match the user’s external view (e.g. formatting the results of an SQL
query for display in a Web page)

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 Data Independence
• Logical Data Independence:
• The capacity to change the conceptual schema without having
to change the external schemas and their associated application
programs.
• Physical Data Independence:
• The capacity to change the internal schema without having to
change the conceptual schema.
• For example,
• the internal schema may be changed when certain file structures
are reorganized, or
• new indexes are created to improve database performance.

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 Data Independence (continued)
• When a schema at a particular level is changed, only the mappings
between this schema and lower-level schemas need to be changed in
a DBMS that fully supports data independence.
• The higher-level schemas themselves are unchanged.
• Hence, the application programs need not be changed since
they refer to the external schemas.

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 DBMS Languages and Interfaces
• Data Definition Language (DDL)
• Data Manipulation Language (DML)
• High-Level or Non-procedural Languages: These include the
relational language SQL
• May be used in a standalone way or may be embedded in a
programming language
• Low Level or Procedural Languages:
• These must be embedded in a programming language

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